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.... U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in a separate media call
about the results that this sort of "implementation dip" is fairly
common. He pointed to Massachusetts, which saw a temporary drop in test
scores in the early 2000s after changing its standards. "This is the
ultimate long-term play," he said.

Arne Duncan is leaving this crap shooting soon but the nation's children are stuck with it.

But Brookings' Loveless dismissed the idea of a post-implementation drop
being the norm. "I don't buy it," he said. "If that whole theory is
right, we should have seen it two years ago," when the common standards
were also being implemented.

About Duncan's dip claim based on Massachusetts, Ze'ev Wurman writes HERE. => " It is also interesting to note that Secretary Duncan pointed to
Massachusetts, that supposedly saw a drop in test scores after raising
standards two decades ago before becoming a consistently high-achieving
state, as his way of “excusing” the NAEP drop. It seems Duncan attempts
to rewrite history. Massachusetts suffered a significant decline only in fourth grade reading once
in 2003 … truly a “blip.” Otherwise it continued its impressive climb
to the top of the states … until losing ground since 2011 in all four NAEP indicators. That certainly is not even close to past Massachusetts’ record, despite what Mr. Duncan would have us believe."

===

Meanwhile, Michael Petrilli, the president of the Thomas B. Fordham
Institute, wrote initially that the economy would be to blame if NAEP
scores dropped but revoked that interpretation after digging into the
state data. Instead, he asked onlookers to be patient, "to wait for more
sophisticated analyses to emerge, and to wait until 2017 to see if
these numbers are a one-time blip or the beginning of a disturbing
trend."

Really Mr. Petrilli wait two years until 2017. So when grade 3 students are in grade 5, then we can think about changes. You must be kidding. Right?